Napolitano Makes Global Warming a Homeland Security Priority

There she goes again. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano just can’t speak in public without destroying any remaining confidence Americans have left in her agency. CNS News reports that at a conference devoted to “environmental justice”, Secretary Napolitano announced that the Department of Homeland Security would be creating the “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force” to mitigate the affects of global warming on security and response operations. No…really.

According to CNS, Napolitano said the task force would examine: 1) “How will FEMA work with state and local partners to plan for increased flooding or wildfire or hurricane activity that is more serious than we’ve seen before?” 2) “What assistance can the Coast Guard bring to bear to assist remote villages in, for example, Alaska which already have been negatively affected by changes up in the Arctic?” 3) “How can we focus on how climate change is going to affect our rural citizenry including those who live along our borders both northern and southern?”, and 4) how will the Coast Guard or border services react to rising water levels.

We were first warned of these coming priorities in the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, released in February, which was intended to be a strategic outline for the department but instead discussed global warming, while barely mentioning the U.S. Coast Guard. Of course, these new priorities don’t mean better resources for the Coast Guard or anyone at the department. The distracting initiative is merely a stunt aimed at President Obama’s leftist base.

If it worries you that the department created in 2002 has not only lost considerable focus on securing our nation, but become an outpost for misguided political musings, you are not alone. Secretary Napolitano has time and time again proven that she fails to understand the immediate threats facing Americans and will waste breath and resources on liberal dogma rather than warning our enemies of our continued vigilance, and demonstrating it to them.

In April 2009, Napolitano’s department issued a report that warned of “right wing extremism” praying on returning veterans joining and planning harm against the nation they just finished serving. At the time, American Legion National Commander David Rehbein didn’t demand an apology, but instead correctly assessed the problem: “Trying to monitor a group of several million veterans is frankly going to cost them a lot of time and resources, they don’t have, that they could better spend monitoring already identified groups.” Exactly.

The current leadership at DHS spends so much time placating politically-correct leftists, they are guaranteed to not be using every available minute and resource afforded to them to prevent terrorism, respond to disasters and protect us from obvious Islamist plots.

But let’s pretend that global warming does indeed pose an imminent national security threat, do the goals of this “task force” even make sense? No.

First, it’s built on the faulty premise that we are facing increased hurricane activity, flooding and wildfires due to global warming. Casual or not, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact, we’ve had two consecutive hurricane seasons that were historically quiet. But again, pretending the premise is correct, wouldn’t the department be prepared for a greater-than-average number of response activities simply based on resource potential rather than adding some political cause to it all?

This alone proves that the intent of the “task force” is to make a silly political statement; otherwise Secretary Napolitano currently has her department vastly unprepared for no valid reason.

Secondly, the Coast Guard can already offer the specific assistance to Americans with which it is mandated. If our neighbors in the Arctic region are experiencing any of the issues that liberals attach to global warming — i.e. land loss, water-levels rising, extreme temperatures — what exactly would be the Coast Guard’s new mission? They perform rescue operations, but surely Napolitano doesn’t expect water levels to rise so fast that Alaskans can’t slowly back away?

An already stretched-too-thin Coast Guard should, again, always be planning for a greater-than-average number of events, but not adding to which events they respond to based on political whim. As for their infrastructure, Coast Guard headquarters are hopefully prepared for most coastal weather activity regardless of cause, and their vessels hopefully remain floating on water, despite its rise.

President Obama has also reallocated considerable resources at NASA, from its original mission of human exploration to global warming research. And other agencies like the Departments of Energy, Commerce and the EPA are also diverting considerable taxpayer dollars to fight global warming and increase economic burdens on our country while ignoring other urgent and pressing priorities. But the misplaced focus of DHS is particularly worrisome given its critical mandate.

Secretary Napolitano dismissed the Times Square bomber as a “one-off”, which of course turned out to be false as we learned of his connection to Islamist terror networks. Napolitano also said the “system worked” after the Christmas Day attack, when we later learned the system was lucky and again, we had an attacker tied to a large Islamist network.

While belittling the Islamist threat against America, Napolitano increased intrusive security measures across the nation and then acted with shock when the public noticed the illogical disconnection. Simply put, Napolitano has said nothing to make Americans feel safer, and far too often, does the exact opposite.

DHS is currently spending considerable time assigning politically convenient causes to potential events rather than operating on known threats. It’s time for Secretary Napolitano to start demonstrating she has some basic understanding of the mission of her department, and that she is carrying out in a competent way, before Americans aren’t the only ones who recognize her misplaced priorities.

Rory Cooper is Director of Strategic Communications at The Heritage Foundation. In this position, Cooper coordinates the think tank’s external message and internal communications, manages its entire digital communications and social media portfolios, and develops new media partnerships. Cooper also serves as the executive editor for The Foundry, the conservative policy news blog at Heritage.

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i am not a scientist. i am not an intellectual. i am not someone who pretends to be something they are not. but this is what I do know about the subject and it is summed up with the discovery of the "climate gate" emails. This alone should sink this "ship" of deceit. at the moment the liberals are keeping this issue in their back pockets and when and if the economy gets better they can take this issue out and use it again with full force. people in my area are getting out of the farm, primarily the cattle portion of the farm, for various reasons. at one time this county had more cattle than a vast majority of the other counties in the entire u.s. now we have more horses than cattle. the one farm business that has been regulated to death is the dairy farm. an interesting fact is that for every dairy farm ten jobs were connected to it. now, we have few dairy farms thus we have unemployment in the farm sector which is pretty well nonexistent. by the way i at one time was the environmental officer for the fastest growing county in our state. so i do know how they play the game. thank you. this is my first post and i hope i did not put you to sleep.

Secretary Napolitano need to learn what the duties of Home Land Security are. Her department should be dealing with boarder security, hostile threats and items that affect the security of our Nation. Global Warming has nothing to do with Home Land Security. But Secretary Napolitano is just another stooge of the Obama Administration and has proven time and time again that she does not know what she is doing. The joke of the whole thing is because Mr. Obama is such a clueless wonder, Secretary Napolitano looks like a genius!

By Rory Cooper There she goes again. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano just can’t speak in public without destroying any remaining confidence Americans have left in her agency. CNS News reports that at a conference devoted to “environmental justice”, Secr…

There is a tongue-in-cheek "law" (the Peter Principle) stating that folks will rise in their work structure until arriving at their level of incompetence. Unfortunately for us and our security, it seems that this pathetic bureaucrat, grossly overburdened with progressive platitudes, reached her plateau somewhere between graduation from kindergarten and entering junior high (as it was). Heaven help us (she certainly can't).

Quit oppressing the people with your rhetorical exaggerations and imagination, Janet. Mother does not need your over protection! She takes care of herself. She'll take care of you to! The states have organizations on guard in case mother is angered. The people help using human kindness. YOU ARE NOT NEEDED! Learn your own job and conduct yourself using practicality.

While our winters are getting colder and our summers not so hot, This idiotic administration still wants to increase the heating oils and most important gasoline to $6.00 a gallon. Why when most real scientist ( not the freaks that Gore had paid off) had stated that we may be entering a cooling of our climate. So how much money is Obama and this congress making on these deals. People we nee a revolution ASAP. Lets try to plan a way to stop these anti Americans and protect the real American people. He cares more about the Gays and there must be a reason for that. And he wants to flood America with illegals. Is this because he is also an illegal. And do we need any more info to get rid of him, Then we may have a chance. Al

As long as Incompetano remains lost in the wilderness she is of no use to the American citizenry against the threat of terrorism. We shouldn't be wasting another dime of funding on her until she is either fired or rediscovers the actual duties of the DHS. I would rather reduce the debt than fund an agency that is purposefully nonfunctional. Better yet we could eliminate DHS and let the States manage their own security at the local level. Thanks Icompetano for demonstrating yet again another govt.agency that is incapable of serving its intended purpose. DHS may never have had a purpose other than to increase the size of govt.

What happened to spend the money on SECURE our Borders. All this other, is just the left's way to get what they want in somewhere, regardless of it being valid or not. Is there no control on Homeland security funds ??

Janet Napolitano is just like most in power,evil. And for evil to rule is for good people to do nothing !! And we have a large group of evil people in control of America and they gain more control each day because we depend on words to stop them!! It is not working,they trample our Constitution and shove God aside!! They trample us with huge taxes and various other regulations that are not Constitutional.I have stated that soon we will see a new civil war,a war of us fighting the government and there will be blood because they will have our soldiers and police murdering us for our stand!! They are right now having constructing camps now to hold large numbers of us like they did Japanese in ww2.Socialism,especially Obama's style is on move!!

Yet they will not guard the Mexican boarder from all sorts of terrorists and illegals from entering, one of the few things government is given the right to do in the Constitution. So, they will not do their assigned job… but want to take on more? Sounds like someone needs to be fired (and impeached).

This is being published on the same week we learn that a border patrol agent was killed while pursuing illegals. Our Department of Homeland Security responded by traveling to Arizona and refusing to meet with the sheriffs involved. Why can't we have some direct action by Homeland Security on this issue?

Ms. Napolitano is pretty much an embarrasment. A parrot for liberal causes w/o the ability the grasp or carryout the mission of protecting our borders. The American people know it and feel it & it says alot about the system that put her in charge of such an agency. The call for her to step down needs to be heard…..LOUDER!

My first response was how can the left believe we are this dumb but then I realized they simply don't care – they just want to wear us down with idiotic policies that drive up the cost of government and in this case, actually reduce national security by drawing resources away from legitimate defense issues.

So what do we do?

The mindset of the liberal-left has already infected both major political parties.

The success of the tea party movement helped elect more Republicans but that is no guarantee that GOP policies will actually be any better than the far-out radical, corrupt and wasteful practises of the (social) Democrats.

The liberal rhetoric about global warming is a sham to increase taxes, and cost all of significant increases in our energy costs. I am a retired research scientist, Yale PhD in engineering and applied science. While there is historically strong correlation between CO2 and Earth's warming, correlation does not imply cause and effect. In fact the Earth's warming seems to have occured before the CO2 increases which is what one would expect from chemistry.

Recently, it was found that approimately 16 thousand years ago the Sahara desert was a lush area with lakes and settlements. It now is a desert wasteland. Certainly man's CO2 prouction didn't cause this climactic change. In fact it was the Earth's wobble on its rotational axis. This wobble has about a 30,000 year cycle (not my arear of expertise) and accounts for much of the repeated climactic changes that have ocured throughout history.

Obama and his staff are the most ignorant of all those presidents and their staffs that came before to govern our great country. It is tragic that we must endure another few years of outright incompetence.

When a politician points in one direction, you'd better look carefully in the opposite direction; like magicians, they seek to deceive us to hide their true intentions. Thus when Ms. Napolitano expresses concern about remote villages in Alaska, she is perhaps thinking even more intently of those denizens in southern Arizona–the prospective future Democrats who are flooding across the border from Mexico. Oh, no, wait–per Ms. Napolitano, the borders are more secure than they've ever been. My mistake. Never mind!

By the way, your writer needs some editorial oversight. The first paragraph should say "mitigate the effects"–not "affects"–of global warming.

Napfooliano is an incompetent leftist lapdog who left the state of AZ in utter ruin and then skipped town to go to DC to see if she coudl ruin the USA. Conservatives had better unite and throw out not only the rabid demorats, but all the RINOs, also. If we don't, we will see more of the idiocy displayed by Reid and the senate these last few days. It is no wonder that all these bills and the treaty were passed in a lame duck congress. If they had been done before the election, there wouldn't be a demorat standing.

Everytime something like this happens I recieve validation. I knew before BHO was elected that he was incompetent and nearly everyone in his administration is just as or nearly as bad. Now we have a DNI who is sadly unaware of terrorist threats and arrests in Great Britian, an AG who allows his people to intimidate voters, his affiliation with ACORN a known criminal organization, and now a Homeland Security Secretary who is clueless about the facts and truths of global warming. Needless to say I find all this very funny and very much expected.

if you ban drilling for oil in the u.s., then we have no where else to go for our oil than saudi arabia , correct? who funds al queda, hamas, etc.? if our borders are by law or decree, open to the out side, then the outside will come in!Obama refuses, along with napolatano to close our borders,sothat there is free flow to the outside, such as alqueda, who now has an unimpeded route to your back yard! all i'm saying, is that, if obummer and the like are not traitors, or worse, they are most assuredly facilitators of radical islam at the very least and should be hung, like any other traitors in history, for that crime alone. god knows thats not all theyve done to destroy my country.

WHAT THE HECK, SHE WAS DOWN AT THE MEXICAN BORDER A DAY OR TWO AGO–I HAVEN'T HEARD WHAT SHE DETERMINED ABOUT THAT CRISIS. WHY DOESN'T SHE JUST FOCUS ON ONE BIG PROBLEM AT A TIME, SINCE SHE SEEMS TO HAVE DIFFICULTY !

I DON'T BELIEVE THE CLIMATE IS HER DEPARTMENT !!! (OR ANY OF HER BUSINESS)

The average rainfall in Montana is about 14 inches per year. In 1876, the year of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Montana Military District headquarters at Fort Shaw, Montana Territory, recorded seven (7) inches of rainfall in the month of May. I do not believe that monthly amount has ever been recorded anywhere in the state since that date, certainly not in my lifetime. I am 72.

Unusual weather events will occur from time to time. I doubt if the Department of Homeland Security could have prevented this event, had it existed at that time!

Janet needs to learn the job of securing the borders, keeping terrorist out and enforcing immigration laws. She has been a nightmare! She and Obama do everything they can to see that illegals stay in our country. What a sad excuse for head of Homeland Security. Leave Climate change to Mother Nature…She knows her job.

We should really begin to set up something for these social engineers to work in near the border to finally experience the environment as it really is. We could stand by to be sure they stay there and.periodically announce we feel their pain –from having to feed themslves.

One hundred twenty million people just cannot possibly feed everyone and the dreams of these fanatics besides..

This is just another step in Obama’s and his administration’s goal to destroy America. The one agency that is supposed to protect American citizens from enemies from within and without will be focusing on a non-existent issue made up by people who have been wrong for half a century of predictions of global heating and global freezing. These people are the modern versions of the nuts that used to walk around with a sign stating that the world will end tomorrow.

NASA an agency created for space exploration and scientific research is now to take on diplomatic duties. Instead of continued scientific work, the organization is to cuddle up to Muslims. Would you let a brain surgeon fix your breaks? No, it would be a waste of the surgeon’s expertise and you could not be sure that your breaks would stop when you wanted.

He couldn’t disband either agency so he is doing the next best thing by changing their focus on issues that are out of their expertise. By keeping them busy with frivolous tasks, he accomplishes the same thing as if he had closed them down without the backlash.

"Global Warming" is a huge scam to scare people into agreeing to do stupid things that the radical environmentalists want everyone to do and it is also a Liberal scam to scare people into allowing a huge increase in government control over us. A person doesn't have to be a "scientist" to see that so called "global warming" is a scam. All a person has to know is elemental mathematics and statistics.

To say that the average temperature of the earth has increased 3/4 of a degree F. in the past 100 years has no meaning unless you are talking about the total temperature of the planet. Because of the extreme variability of the temperature of places even 10 miles a part, you would have to have temperature sensing devices at least every square mile over the total surface of the planet. We don't have that. There is no satellite technology to take the total temperature of the planet to a degree of accuracy of 1/10 of a degree F.

Therefore scientists don't know what the total temperature of the planet at any moment in time. There is talk of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I checked to make sure and found that all of the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen except for trace gases that are 6/10000 of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide makes up 4/10000 of the atmosphere. That is 4 ten thousandths of the atmosphere! If there was even a 25% increase in carbon dioxide that would only mean an increase from 4/10000 to 5/10000 of the atmosphere! That is hardly enough to increase the temperature of anything.

No, "global warming" is a total scam and a lie for powerful people's personal agenda!

Great article, Rory, it was right on…and needed, but I don't think they were "praying" on veterans but "preying" on them, don't you think? I'd think we would make sure we weren't open to attack even from the left about our spelling when writing articles like this. Wouldn't you think? Not a big thing and I'm not trying to attack you or anything like that. Remember a few years ago a Vice President who couldn't recognize when they were setting him up in an Elementary School with a word they ask him to read. Remember they had written it down on a paper and handed to him and he read it spelled incorrectly? It damaged him for life. A Republican, a joke still today. That's all I mean. We want them to pay attention to what we write, right? Still a great article anyway.

Please!! Give me a break. In addition to being a totally ineffective leader of a debateably useless organization, she intends to dable in the politics of climate change. What in the world does that have to do with her job. Perhaps the president should appoint her to the epa or department of interior and give her post to a true security proffesional who is actually qualified for the job this monstrous agency was created to fullfill.

Napolitano is a deer in headlights! She is in way over her head as Homeland Security Chief, Wasn't global warming debunked? This organization has not caught one terrorist through its own efforts and only gives knee-jerk responses to whatever situation happens. Homeland Security is one of the agencies that should be abolished along with the FED and other government organizations,

Global warming & cooling has been happening since the beginning. It's a naturally occurring thing that is all a part of the design. We don't matter so much, and shouldn't be so presumptuous and high minded to think that we can really make a difference. Janet doesn't matter either, she won't be around much longer now that the new team is moving in with a new plan.

As for Mother Earth, we would all do well to remember that there is a Father God who created it all through His Son Jesus the Christ. And when He is ready to adjust the climate every eye will see and every knee will bow.

Revelation 6:13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains

Global warming a Homeland Security issue? Huh? I never cease to be amazed at the (excuse my French) stupidity of many in this administration. Even my 4th graders understood that climate changes were gradual; they were not something that we needed emergency plans to deal with them.

Napiol has missed the boat, just like most of the ill concieved, unqualified appointees of the current administration. 1st mistake was calling all military- active and retired – potential terrorists. If she had one little bit of common sense, she could easily see, as the remainder of the entire world can see, the potential terrorists – primarily – are the Islam terrorists, both in our country – with their 34 terrorist training camps – and the constant importing of more and more….Plus – how many millions of american dollars wasted – to import an extreme bunch of Palenstinian terrorists into the United states of America by the current administration, which she is part of. She is mostly on the defense side of the terrorist problem to keep the American people in the dark of where the problem is.

She can't even control our borders and she wants to take on this bogus cause. Scientists have already stated that we have entered a period of global cooling. The Artic ice pack is getting larger, not smaller. Just because it was warm in Cancun when the global warming alarmists recently met does not prove global warming exists.

OMG, with all of the REAL issues that can and will effect this country, this lady picks Global warming as the one she see's as [the] real threat to the security of the United States. Again, I'll say it….that agency is being run off the tracks!.

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